Walesa urges strikes

Press, 21 December 1981, Page 1

Walesa urges strikes

NZPA-Reuter Vienna

The leader of the Solidarity union, Lech Walesa, is reported to have appealed for mass strikes and passive resistance against Poland’s military rulers but the authorities said yesterday that most factories were running well in spite of some continuing disruptions. Warsaw Radio broadcasts carrying reports of the disruptions were the first official confirmation heard by monitors in Vienna that the Military Council set up almost a week ago was still encountering opposition from workers in its efforts to tame Solidarity. Travellers from Poland reaching Vienna at the weekend brought with them what they said was a Solidarity

pamphlet now circulating in Warsaw with Mr Walesa’s appeal to his fellow Poles. Dated December 15, and relayed through Catholic Church leaders, the message from Mr Walesa urged unity, along with strikes in main industries and passive resistance in small businesses. But his appeal emphasised the avoidance of bloodshed, a theme also sounded in a message from Poland’s Catholic Primate, Archbishop Jozef Glemp, which was to be read yesterday in all Polish churches. Mr Walesa was being held at Skolimow, about 25km south of Warsaw, the Swedish daily,- “Aftonbladet,” said at the week-end, quoting Solidarity and Catholic sources.

He was being . held in

“comparatively decent” conditions, the paper said. A Warsaw Radio report said that normal work was still disrupted at a steel mill in Katowice and in plants on the Baltic coast and in southwestern Poland. But a deputy Minister told the radio that apart from these exceptions, work was going on well in steel and metallurgical plants and in most engineering factories throughout the country. Underlining its contention that Poland under martial law was gradually returning to normal, the State radio said Parliamentary business would resume in Warsaw tomorrow and that there would be some relaxations in travel and curfew restrictions. A spokesman for the Vatican said that Pope John Paul had sent an Italian prelate to Poland to check on the situation there.

From Warsaw, a Reuter correspondent, Brian Mooney, telexed his first dispatches since the martial law authorities cut the communications links of Western news agencies last Monday. He reported a heavy military and police presence in the '■ capital and growing limits on ordinary life. Telephone lines are cut, entertainment banned, people cannot travel without permission, and all letters must be addressed in open envelopes. The Polish Ambassador to Sweden said reports of the number of people arrested in Poland had been greatly exaggerated. The Ambassador (Mr Pawel Cieslar) told the British Broadcasting Corporation that reports of up to 50,000 arrests were untrue and that no more than 4000 had been interned. ‘Editor dead,’ page 8